Eton's Great War Scandal
Andrew Robinson looks at the 1915 uproar about a speech on 'Christian Charity' towards Germany which cost the headmaster of Britain's most famous public school his job.
In August 17th, 1915, Archibald Primrose, Earl of Rosebery and a former prime minister, received an anonymous letter about the headmaster of his old school, Eton, of which he was now a Fellow, which spoke in less than complimentary terms:
My Lord, Are not the Governing Body of Eton going to remove that pestilent lunatic Edward Lyttelton from the position which he now disgraces? It is a humiliating and exasperating thought to hundreds of Old Etonians that a man so unbalanced in mind and with so unbridled a lust for publicity should be permitted to remain in such an office...
If this were the outburst of a crank, the letter would be inconsequential enough: but it transpired that most of the press, a large number of private individuals and clergymen, and furthermore the governing body of Lyttelton's school had come to think in much the same terms.
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